Midnight Man S01E01 (ITV)

Midnight Man is a British TV serial on ITV. It stars James Nesbitt as Max Raban, a journalist gone wrong with a strange phobia and a gift for seeing conspiracies everywhere.

After having named a source and being disgraced as a journalist, Max Raban is left going through people’s rubbish in order to find new stories. Since that time, he also developed a strange phobia of daylight. It’s also broken up his marriage for the time being.

Raban investigates and finds government death squads and other strange incidents in the UK. I thought that this was an interesting episode. The main character Raban has totally gone bonkers. In his mind, he needs to salvage some part of himself before he can fully go back to his family. Things go terribly wrong when he investigates the wrong types of people.

Warning: spoilers ahead.

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A cab driver gets his fare. A man is watching them leave. He goes and steals the trash.

A boy comes home from a football match and is kidnapped. The masked men take him into a van. Before he knows what hits him, the young man is shot in the head. The masked men take of their masks and are pissed. How will they get the bullet out of his head?

Max goes through the trash. He’s got a lead on something. He calls his editor. He found out that an aging rocker named Robson is involved in kiddie porn. Max wants his old job back. The editor says that he can’t. Max cost way too much to the paper. People have long memories. They won’t take him back. Max has got some problem with sunlight. He can’t be in sunlight.

The Defense Secretary is having an affair with a Slovenian dancer. He needs Max to investigate. He wakes up at 5:55PM. He’s got the Secretary’s place staked out. He sees the dancer throwing out the trash in a Mercedes. It gets dumped down the road. Max is after it. He finds a fax with the title “Headless Man – Pugnus Dei”. He also finds a pregnancy test.

Max goes to the club where the girl dances. He asks for a dancer. He knows her. He brings her a sandwich. She doesn’t know anything. She’s from Albania. He wants her to tell the Slovenian girl that it will be worth her while. He leaves abruptly when he sees the time.

He goes to see his daughter at his ex-wife’s house. He just wants to see her sleeping. The wife says that his daughter wants her dad back. She needs her husband back. Max has (-)phobia. He says that he’ll be back on the weekend to see his daughter. She agrees as long as he goes to see his therapist.

Before leaving, Max saw an article about a headless torso that was found.

So Max’s condition is psychosomatic. The next night, he examines the fax again. It’s written in some form of code. He goes to see the nick where the body was taken to. The sergeant says that it looks like some kind of honour killing. Max eyes the trash being taken out. He ransacks it again. While he’s doing that, he sees two grieving parents leaving. He follows them. He manages to get into the door.

The father is told that his son Majid was decapitated. Majid was a very ambitious boy. He was into football and girls. They are from Iran. Majid was born here. The sister doesn’t want her dad to speak to Max anymore. He’s already written his story. He leaves and phones his editor. He tells Max to continue to get some dirt on the minister, not the Majid story. On his way back, he sees someone parked outside his flat.

A bunch of young hoodlums attack him. He pulls a gun and they run away. Max goes to see the boys. He tells them that he will give them 50 quid for the man’s wallet and the phone. The man is an anti terrorist officer.

Pugnus Dei = God’s fist. The man had a lot of calls from Daniel Cosgrave who works for Defence Concern. He takes the fax and hides it.

The next day, he calls Cosgrave and asks about Majid. Cosgrave rapidly hangs up and leaves his meeting. Max is about to head out into the day. He’s nervous. He manages to get to Defence Concern. He asks the woman who greets him about Majid and the headless corpse. He also wants to know why they are talking to anti-terrorist officers. She says that their only contact is with the diplomatic branch. Defence Concern is a special interest group. A defence lobbying group.

The woman investigates Max Raban. He is a journalist who was involved in a political bribe scandal. He revealed his source, Helen McVay. The woman is involved with Cosgrave. She briefs him on Raban. McVay hung herself after the scandal with the Deputy PM. Cosgrave tells her that he won’t be able to see her later tonight. Cosgrave is married. She is his mistress.

Max goes to see his editor. He briefs him on what he has learned on the Slovenian girl. Max tells him that she might be preggers.

Max talks about the JFK conspiracy with his little daughter. His ex wants him to see Trevor his psychologist and get himself sorted out.

He drops by to see Trevor. His phobia with daylight started when McVay killed herself.

On the way back, Max is followed by a van. They fishtail him and take him out. They tell him to stop sniffing around. He comes home and finds his own place ransacked. His laptop and electronic equipment is missing. They also got the fax.

Raban goes to see Reza, Majid’s cousin whom he replaced at the soccer match. He tells him that there is a list of people they want to disappear. So they kill them. He’s talking about some kind of death squad. Someone approached him with a video of his cousin’s death. The killers taped it as a trophy. Reza says to meet him here on Thursday morning.

Cosgrave is touchy about a memory stick. His mistress notices this as he stashes it in a locked drawer. They are at Hagan’s presentation. He’s the head of a Christian investment group that specializes in defence.

Max meets up with Cosgrave’s mistress. He tells her about her company’s involvement with Majid and the ransacking of his flat. He leaves.

Reza is absent from his meeting with Max. Max investigates and finds that he’s been murdered. Actually, a suicide is suspected, but he was most likely thrown off the building.

Cosgrave’s mistress hears the news of Reza’s apparent suicide. Her suspicions are almost confirmed. She tries to go after the hidden memory stick. She gets it.

Max breaks into Reza’s flat. He wants to find the video. The editor phones him. All of the computers are gone. He finds a hidden wall detailing the people killed by the death squad.

Cosgrave’s mistress copies the files onto her computer. She quickly places it back, but Cosgrave comes back quickly. She isn’t very good at sleight-of-hand.

Max briefs his editor. He says that the anti-terrorist card was a fake. The death squad is after a bunch of people whose views are against the party line of the government. The editor dismisses his concerns. Max watches on as he joins his colleagues for a birthday party.

Max gets a visit from Blake from anti-terror. He tells him to forget about Majid. He mocks his efforts. Max thinks that they went after the wrong cousin and murdered him. Blake is the one that was involved in Majid’s killing. He dials someone on his mobile and says to kill her. He walks away. Max doesn’t understand.

His ex-wife opens the door and gets assassinated.